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Style Guide

Our Name

  • The University of Salford, not Salford University or Salford Uni
  • Don’t abbreviate to UoS in any externally facing documents

Other Name

  • New Adelphi not the New Adelphi
  • MediaCity not Media City
  • ‘askUS’ service to be written as stylised

Referring To The V-C

  • In the first instance refer to the V-C as Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nic Beech
  • He can then be referred to as Nic

Titles Of Academics

  • Don’t capitalise the word academic or academics
  • Refer to Dr or Professor in the first instance and then by their first name

Capitalisation

  • When referring to a specific university, capitalise, eg. ‘the University of Salford’. If referring to universities in general, do not capitalise, eg. ‘if you’re thinking of going to university’
  • Schools or faculties are capitalised when spelt in full (eg ‘School of Environment and Life Sciences’) but the capital is dropped in shortened uses after this (eg ‘the school offers’). The use of unspecific or plurals (eg ‘all schools and faculties must’) are not capitalised.
  • When writing a heading, write it in sentence case, eg. ‘Six things you didn’t know about Salford’, not ‘Six Things You Didn’t Know About Salford’
  • Open Days to be capitalised
  • For subject areas use lower case, eg. nursing, history, geography. For specific course titles, use capitals, eg. Civil and Architectural Engineering, Media and Performance
  • Industry Collaboration Zones to be capitalised, as well as names of the four zones, eg. Engineering and Environments

Numbering

  • Numbers one to ten are written as words, 11 onwards written numerically
  • Percentages in titles and in prose to be written as X%

Date and Time

  • Dates to be written as: Saturday 24 June 2017
  • Use the 24 hour clock

Ampersand (&)

  • Only to be used in school logos, not in prose, eg. ‘Staff at the School of Environment and Life Sciences…’
School of Health & Society
Salford School of Arts, Media & Creative Technology

Acronyms

  • Avoid using too many acronyms. Consider your audience – will they know what the acronym means?
  • If you are referring to an organisation/body with a long name several times throughout your copy, always refer to it by its full title in the first instance and give the acronym in brackets afterwards, eg. ‘Industry Collaboration Zones (ICZs) offer a real-world approach to learning.’
  • This is not necessary for well-known organisations that are commonly referred to by their acronyms such as the BBC and the NHS.

Colon

  • Colons should be used to introduce a quotation, eg. Professor Fernando said: “Today we marked the beginning of an ambitious project.”
  • At the beginning of a list, eg. ‘The researchers looked at various large mammals: wolves, bears and deer.’
  • Between two parts of sentence where the first clause introduces an idea that is resolved by the second clause, eg. ‘Salford researchers have found a new way to combat cancer cells: combining vitamin C with antibiotics.’

Semicolon

  • Semicolons are used to connect two independent clauses that could otherwise be written as two separate sentences, eg. ‘Students are being given the opportunity to shadow the Sports Tours International events team; there’s even the chance of a paid social media internship.’
  • Semicolons can also be used to write detailed list, eg. ‘Academics from across the USA attended the conference, including Alex Case from the Audio Engineering Society; Carmen Hoover from Olympic College in Washington State; Kamilah Cummings from DePaul University in Chicago; and Sharon Davies from Middle Tennessee State University.’

Web Addresses/URLs

  • If your web address is on printed collateral, try to keep it as short as possible so that it’s easy for the reader to remember and access.
  • Do not include http:// – in some instances the www is not needed, but please ensure you check before removing.
    • Good example: salford.ac.uk/openday
    • Bad example: www.salford.ac.uk/study/visit/undergraduate-open-days
  • URLS in digital/web copy can be embedded as a clickable link

Qualifications

  • master’s – lower case m and apostrophe
  • postgraduate – lower case p
  • BA, BA (Hons), BSc, BEng, PgDip, PgCert, MA, MSc, MPhil, MEng, PhD

Research

  • Capitalise names of centres, eg. Centre for Applied Research in Health, Welfare and Policy
  • Titles of research papers and journal articles should be written in sentence case and put in single quotation marks, eg. ‘It takes two? : exploring the manual handling myth’
  • The names of books, journals, newspapers, television programmes and album titles should be italicised, eg.:
    • A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
    • The Journal of International Marketing
    • The Guardian
    • Coronation Street
    • Louder Than Bombs by the Smiths

Exclamation Marks

  • Consider your audience – use sparingly and only in informal communications
  • Only use one, eg. ‘Welcome back!’ not ‘Welcome back!!!’